


i think i

by lavendrsblue



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Canon Era, F/M, Falling In Love, Not Canon Compliant, Running Away, Sharing a Bed, based on the unused azure moon content from the datamine, more like idiots in love..., you've heard of taylor swift song title now get ready for: super junior song title
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:53:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23870380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lavendrsblue/pseuds/lavendrsblue
Summary: On the run from their former comrades in Faerghus, Felix and Annette encounter an obstacle greater than any mad king or demonic beast: a single bedroll, for the two of them to share.
Relationships: Annette Fantine Dominic/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 12
Kudos: 90





	i think i

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nachuuki](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nachuuki/gifts).



Annette cannot remember the last time she felt her toes. She wriggles them within her wool-lined boots—not that the wool is doing anything, temperature-wise. A cold-fingered draft sneaks in through the flap of the small tent. They can’t risk a campfire, even on a cloudy night like this: if there are Kingdom scouts within half a league, any mages with heat-tracking spells, they would be discovered instantly. She would know; she’d invented the spell herself.

If she and Felix can just survive tonight, they’ll be okay, she tells herself for the thousandth time. They’ve been running for a night and a day, having left under cover of darkness to ride hard through the forests of southern Charon, away from the Kingdom camp. If they can just survive the night and rise early tomorrow morning, before the sun, they can reach the Imperial stronghold at Garreg Mach before noontime. 

They’re deserters now. Traitors. It makes her feel even colder than a moment ago.

She does not think about what they’ve left behind, their fathers and their homeland and probably any hope for any future in Faerghus. Of course, the whole idea is that there won’t _be_ a Faerghus to return to, only an especially cold region of a united Fodlan under Edelgard’s hand, but—

She shakes her head to clear it. Spiraling thoughts like those are exactly what she _doesn’t_ need right now. What she needs is a warm drink (ha! if only) and something to keep her hands busy.

Unloading the meager contents of their packs, she wills her hands to stop shaking. Three days’ rations, a startling number of extra knives, a length of rope, flintrock (she rolls her eyes at Felix’s inclusion. Doesn’t he know she’s a _mage?_ ), one bedroll… and not much else.

She looks again, like maybe she’s missed an entire second bedroll. But no: two bags, three days of rations, one bedroll.

“Huh,” she says. Right on cue, Felix ducks into the tent, shaking the snow from his hood.

“There’s a stream a few minutes west, I tied the horses—” He frowns, brow furrowing at her expression. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing is wrong! It’s just…” There are snowflakes sticking to his eyelashes. She blinks hard. “I think you forgot something?”

“Impossible.” He crosses his arms, defensive. “I brought only the essentials. If we’re out here for more than three days, we’re dead anyway.”

The grim reality hangs over them for a moment, pressing down on their shoulders. They’d wagered it would take a night and a day to reach their destination. Any detours would drive them farther away from their goal, and the further they strayed, the less likely they’d make it to safety at Garreg Mach.

Of course, there was also the matter of how they’d be received upon arrival. Two of the Kingdom’s highest-ranked commanders riding straight up to Imperial headquarters in broad daylight might not be viewed as friendly, no matter how frantically they waved scraps of white cloth overhead. 

But right now there’s a far more urgent matter, thinks Annette with a tinge of hysteria. “There’s only one bedroll in here.”

“Yeah, they take up a lot of space,” says Felix, with a tone that kind of says, _If I knew you were this dense maybe I wouldn’t have defected with you._ “We wanted the horses traveling as light as possible.”

“Right, of course! But…” She clears her throat. “You know what that means, right?”

He stares at her, nonplussed. “It means… we can travel that much faster.”

“No, I mean there’s _only one bedroll_.” Blank stare. “For _two of us_.”

“Oh,” he says. “ _Oh_.”

“Yeah,” she says.

“I… didn’t think about that.”

The candle flickers. Outside, the wind howls. Felix swallows audibly, the line of his throat bobbing.

“I’ll sleep outside,” he says. “We need a lookout, anyway.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, you’ll freeze to death.” Annette rolls her eyes. This may be… inconvenient, but more inconvenient would be Felix’s untimely death under six feet of snow. “We’ll just have to share.”

“Uh,” says Felix. “Share.”

“Yes.”

“The two of us. Together.”

“Ye-es,” says Annette, drawing out the sound. Maybe the light is dim enough to hide the blush clawing up her neck.

“Oh,” says Felix. “I, uh. Hm. That works.”

Annette grits her teeth, embarrassment colored with sudden frustration. Why is he being so completely unhelpful right now! Can’t he see that she’s trying to make this screamingly awkward situation a tiny bit _less_ so? “It’ll be good for us,” she declares, lifting her chin. “The best way to keep warm is, you know. Body heat.”

“Body heat?” he repeats, eyes huge. It takes her a moment to understand why—a long moment, during which she watches a splotchy blush rise up from his neck and threaten to overtake his whole face—before she backpedals wildly.

“No no no, I mean like—regular body heat! Like laying next to each other, not like—like—”

“Sleeping together,” he chokes out, which _so_ does not help this situation.

“Felix _Hugo_ Fraldarius,” she hisses, “I am not _propositioning you_ , need I remind you we are running for our _lives—_ ”

“I didn’t say you were,” he blusters.

“Then why are you looking at me like that!”

“Like _what_?”

“Like I’m—ugh!” She throws up her hands. “I’m not making this up, Felix! I don’t _want_ to share a bed with you, okay, it’s just—science! It’s what science says we should do, so we should do it.”

“Do it,” he says, because apparently the concept of sharing a bed has so fundamentally broken his brain that he’s only capable of repeating the last thing she said. So annoying!

“Felix, I swear—”

“No, no, you’re right. Yeah, I’ll just… yeah.” He visibly shakes himself, then turns away to ruffle through the contents of their shared pack, clearly looking for a reason not to look at her. _Ugh._

She really doesn’t know why he’s being so difficult about this (other than his tendency to be difficult at all times anyway). They and their former classmates had shared sleeping space dozens of times now. It was simply a necessity of wartime, especially during the bitter Faerghus winters; even Ashe had shared a tent with her a few times. So really, it shouldn’t matter at all that she and Felix have to share a bedroll, even though he’s a boy.

She looks up as he sheds his outerwear, the long lines of his legs, the suggestion of muscle bunching in his broad shoulders as he leans down to remove his outer layers. The soft wisps of hair at the nape of his neck where they’ve escaped their hair tie. His long-fingered, calloused hands as he arranges his gloves atop his boots.

Well. Even though he’s a _man_ , it still shouldn’t matter.

This is wartime, they are fighting a war—which is definitely her main concern, and not how the dim flickering light of the single candle they’d lit transforms Felix into a collection of shadows and softened lines.

What was she thinking? What happened to sensible wartime Annette, who was all about focus and practicality and getting things done? There is no room for silly peacetime Annette here, she thinks sternly as she readies herself for bed, re-packing their belongings and taking off her boots, folding her traveling cloak neatly. She leaves her dress on—Felix’s presence does _not_ make a difference, layers are for warmth!—and shimmies into the bedroll, taking care not to brush up against Felix, who is already tucked in and rigid as a corpse.

“Honestly, I’m not going to kick or anything,” she grumbles as she snuffs out the candle. “You can pretend like this isn’t torture for you.”

“It’s not torture,” he mutters, not relaxing a bit. “You don’t—you wouldn’t get it.”

“What do you mean I wouldn’t—!” She bites her lip hard, glaring into the darkness. _Pick your battles, Annette_. She rolls onto her side, facing away from him, and squeezes her eyes shut. “Fine. Goodnight, Felix.”

Behind her, Felix is very very still. Too still to be asleep, she can feel the tension radiating from his back, but he does not respond. But what did she expect from him, anyway?

Just before she succumbs to sleep, she hears the softest sound. Far quieter than she’s ever heard his voice, it can’t possibly be him. But there’s no other way to explain the words spoken on an exhale, intimate: “Goodnight, Annette.”

* * *

Felix wakes up with a mouthful of hair. This is not right.

His body comes awake in pieces, clocking in one at a time. His hair is still in its low tail he tied before he slept: so, not his own hair in his mouth. And his toes are cold as always, but his body is warm, and this is not right either.

Annette shifts in his arms, sighing in her sleep, and he freezes. Sometime in the night she must have turned over—no, he must have turned as well, for they did not lay down to sleep like this. They had laid back to back, each on their sides facing away from each other, not turned together with his breath on her forehead, her hands tucked against his chest, their legs tangled as lovers’ do.

Wartime forces many new necessities, but even so, this is highly improper, says a voice in his head that sounds suspiciously like his father.

He moves silently, so not to wake her. To give her another minute of peaceful sleep, and to spare her the shame of finding herself in an embrace with _him_ , of all people.

He almost makes it out. But as he stands he makes the mistake of looking down—of tucking the corner of the bedroll closer around her shoulder, to hold in the warmth—and her small hand snakes out, catching his sleeve. She mumbles in her sleep, close to wakefulness.

He freezes—holds his breath—pries her fingers away as gently as he can. He dresses quickly, with care to make more noise than usual, so the sound might wake her naturally. She comes awake by degrees, yawning and stretching, and he focuses on tying up his hair. The action always grounds him, helps him become fully alert. He reviews yesterday’s events in his mind: their successful run from the Kingdom camp, freezing wind whipping up snowdrifts to cover their tracks (how much of that was natural, how much was Annette’s work?), Annette looking at him from across the tent with her big blue eyes.

And the _colossally stupid_ things that had come out of his mouth.

Had he really said those things? Generations of Fraldariuses propagating the family line, and it would end with him, because the only thing he’s capable of saying to a beautiful woman is, _It’s not torture to sleep next to you_.

He ought to make it up to her today. He is better than this. He is a _warrior_. He can be—impressive, he is a highly accomplished swordsman. A commanding officer, even, though perhaps not anymore. These are things that are swoon-worthy, he’s been told. Would that were Annette the type of woman to swoon. (She is not.)

“Morning,” says Annette. Her voice is sticky with sleep. His chest constricts.

“Uh, hey,” he says, and hates himself.

“Mm, it’s so dark… do we have to leave yet?”

“The earlier, the better. The boar always rises half an hour before dawn. No one will dare leave before he’s awake to glare at them.”

She snuggles deeper into the bedroll for a moment—he feels as though he has been punched in the stomach—but rises without complaint. They scarf down their rations and saddle the horses quickly, with an eye toward the pinkening horizon.

Felix watches as Annette speaks quietly to her horse, some nonsense murmuring so as to keep it calm as she makes final adjustments to the saddle and bags. She’s so expressive, with her gestures and her freckles, she can never completely mask what she’s feeling. It’s a thing that he really… finds endearing, about her.

She’s looking at him, he realizes, and saying his name, her head tilted at an angle. He’d spoken her name aloud without realizing.

Casting around for something to say, a movement catches his attention: one of her curls has escaped her hood, springing free in the wind. “Your hair,” he says, like an idiot. “It’s, uh.” He mimes brushing it away from his face.

“Hm? Oh, thanks.” She pushes some hair behind her ear, but misses the curl.

“No, it’s…” He reaches out, tucks it underneath the hood of her traveling cloak. Despite the chill she is so warm under his hands. Annette stares up at him, lips slightly parted, and momentarily he’s distracted by the shape, what they might feel like if he were to run a fingertip over them. She is always so expressive, but in that moment her face is unreadable.

He says, “Your hair stands out. Can’t risk being recognized.”

They mount their horses without further exchange and continue through the forests of Charon, toward Garreg Mach where their uncertain future beckons. He turns his mind to strategy, focuses on wrangling his horse, which he was never an expert at anyway. For the rest of the day his thoughts are occupied only by the war—

—except for the moments when he tucks his chin into his collar, to hide the puff of his exhales, and he can smell her close to his skin, feel the heat imprint of her ankle hooked around his, and remember.

**Author's Note:**

> this fic has been a long time coming, starting with the stupid text i sent to [natsuki](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nachuuki/pseuds/nachuuki) months ago: "oh no we’re defecting from the kingdom together… we have to minimize our rations to move faster… oh no there’s only one tent… i guess we have to sleep next to each other… listen to each other breathe…"
> 
> i love netteflix more than my own life. bye


End file.
